Essentially, beer is four basic ingredients, water, malt, yeast and hops, boiled, cooled and stored to ferment.

The last ingredient, hops can be grown in almost any climate with adequate water, sunlight. Beer can be, and historically was, made without one of its now-primary ingredients – hops.

First used in Europe around 1100 AD, hops help to produce more beer from the same amount of malt.

Wild hops

Hops act as a preservative, flavoring agent – where it adds a bitter taste to offset the sweetness of malt sugar (maltose) – and it adds an aroma that can vary from piney to citrus-like. As a preservative, it allows for lower alcohol content to be present, while helping keep the beer fresh enough to be drunk after more than a few weeks. As the product of fermentation of barley grain is alcohol, adding hops allows for less grain to be used for the result – the same amount of brew.

That helps lower the grain portion of the cost of producing it. As a flavoring agent hops contribute in multiple ways. The fruit of the hop plant contains compounds called alpha acids.

When they’re heated they become bitter (a common characteristic of some acids) At the same time, like many plants, hops contain oils that add distinctive aromas.

Aroma and taste are closely intertwined and the addition of a herbal or pine-cone like smell can influence the perceived taste of the final product. Since those oils vaporize readily during heating, additional hops are frequently added during the brewing process, sometimes at the end solely to add additional aroma and flavor.

The technique is common in ales, contributing to their more heady nose and flavor over many lagers.

Hops even possess a mild antibiotic that helps suppress some of the organisms in the wort (the liquid fermented to make beer), allowing the yeast to carry out the fermentation process more efficiently. Their use in brewmaking began around the beginning of the 12th century in Germany. From there the practice spread to Britain in the early 16th century. It was much later that the Scots started using hops. They aren’t a cold climate plant.

This technique was taked up in the United States in 1629

As they have a long history and considering the geographics, it only stands to reason the today there are several dozen basic varieties of hops and would several hundreds of sub-types. There are four types of hops. The bitterness is low and the aroma is high, they hail from Central Europe and have exotic names like Saaz and Spalter, Tettnanger and Hallertau.

They get their names from the regions where they originated.

Names more familiar to English readers, but derived from their European ancestors, are such types as Goldings – an English hop used in some ales – and Fuggles, a woody hop developed in England in the late 19th century. There are several countries: Hersbrucker, a German used in pale lagers and Lublin from Poland.

There’s even the Pacific Gem, a berry-aroma type from New Zealand. As hops do not have any commercial value apart from beer making, the brew meisters have turned such a limitation into such a delightful advantage.

Cheers, Enjoy!